After time you computer starts to collect junk like the attic of an old house – there’s a lot of things you used once or twice but you’ve tossed them aside and forgotten about them.

In this particular instance I’m talking about software that you have installed that you no longer use. Software that you may no longer use could be games, application, utilities, tools, or out of date security products (which by the way is very bad).

How NOT to get rid of software

A lot of people make the mistake of going on a treasure hunt throughout their folders and files deleting stuff that doesn’t look like it belongs.

NEVER do this.

The second you do this you are risking breaking other working programs, and even if you do remove files that are no longer needed you probably won’t find the file and information that was installed in your computer when the file was first created.

Why would I want to disable start-up items in Windows?

There are three good reasons why you would want disable startup items:

• To increase the operational performance of your PC
• To decrease the time your PC takes to boot.
• To disable or prevent viruses, malware, spyware and other unwanted software from loading.

Just like disabling services, disabling startup items free up valuable resources towards the use of legitimate and useful programs and applications.

NOTE: Some types of viruses and malware monitor when they are attempted to be disabled. By booting to Safe Mode, you are ensuring that malware and viruses do not become active and prevent you from effectively disabling them.

So what is a Windows start-up Item?

Start up items are programs that start-up automatically when windows boots up. There are never any startup items that are critical to the operation of the PC, however some programs like anti virus may not work properly or cause an errors if they are disabled.

You may also have difficulties getting online if you disable any of your Internet Service Provider’s software. All of these problems can be fixed by re-enabling the startup item you disabled, or re-installing the software.

Some other examples of start-up items would be things like MSN messenger, ICQ, weather monitoring software, or a media program such as Quick Time or Real Player. These are non-essential startup items and can be disabled as you can start them anytime you would like during the normal operation of your computer.

Configuring Windows to boot into Normal Mode after SafeMode

When you are finished working in safemode, you need to configure your system to boot into normal mode before restarting.

• Open the System Configuration Utility
• Click on the Boot.ini tab and uncheck the checkmark next to /SAFEBOOT . Click Apply .
• Read the warning below before clicking Close

Your computer will now restart into normal mode, and any changes you made to your system in safe mode should now be permanent.

WARNING About Reboot

Once Windows has fully loaded on the reboot, you will be prompted with a dialog box that says:

“You have used the system configuration utility to make changes to your system”

Click the check box that says:

“Do not show me this message again“, then click OK .

This box pops up after you make changes to Windows using the System Configuration Utility. The message will go away if you check the box before clicking OK, otherwise it may bug you every time you start the computer.

There are two methods to get your computer into safemode. I suggest starting with method 1 which will force windows to boot into safemode. If that doesn’t work, try method 2.

Method 1 – Configure the System Configuration Utility (Windows XP)

1. Open the System Configuration Utility.
2. Click on the Boot.ini tab. Check the box next to /SAFEBOOT. You may want to also check the NETWORK option if you require internet access in safe mode. If you don’t need it, don’t check it.
   NOTE: Some systems will not be able to connect to the internet in safe mode, depending on what type of internet connection you have.
3. Click Apply . Click Close . Click Yes to restart your computer.
4. When your computer starts up this time, it will load into safemode. You will notice a few differences when your computer boots into safemode. Watch the video for details.
5. When your computer boots into safemode, it will stop at a screen that says ” To begin, click you user name”. Click your username you would normally use to login to windows. If you are using Windows XP Home Edition, there is no password to login to the “Administrator” account.
6. Once you have clicked on your user account, the screen will turn black and you will be prompted with a message that asks if you want to work in safemode or use the system restore feature. Click Yes to work in safemode.

NOTE: Your display will not look as sharp in safemode as you are used to. Your video card drivers aren’t loaded – this is why the color looks poor and not as crisp as when you are in normal mode.

You are now ready to work in Safe mode!

Method 2 – The “F8″ key (all versions of Windows)

1. Shut down and turn off your computer.
2. Turn the computer on and immediately start to tap the “F8″ key on your keyboard. You must tap the “F8″ key TWICE every second; otherwise you may miss the opportunity to boot into safe mode.
3. Watch the screen as you are tapping “F8″ – you will eventually see a screen that says ” Windows Advanced Startup Options”.
4. There will be a list of options you can choose from as to how you want windows to start up. Using your up and down arrow key on your keyboard, select ” Safe Mode “, or ” Safe Mode with Networking ” (if you wish to have internet access) and then press enter.

NOTE: Some systems will not be able to connect to the internet in safe mode, depending on what type of internet connection you have, so only choose this option if you know what you are doing.

Common problems with Method 2 – The “F8″ key

The most common problem with method two is that you are not tapping the F8 quick enough as the PC starts, or you have a “F-Lock” key on your keyboard that needs to be turned on in order for the PC to recognize you are tapping the F8 key.

If this is the case, you must turn on you computer, and immediately press the “F-Lock” key before you begin to tap “F8″.

The reason why your PC seems slow

Your PC calculates millions of equations and algorithms in split seconds. The more information that it needs to process, the longer you have to wait for the results.

The plain and simple answer to why your PC seems slows down so much is that it’s overloaded! It can only handle so many things at once before it cannot operate within it’s optimal performance threshold; the computers ability to do multiple tasks at one time becomes more than it can handle efficiently.

Reasons why your PC slows down the longer you own it

The longer you have your computer, the more you want to do with it. This usually means installing games and applications, downloading music and movies, editing photos and so on.

There are a few things that happen when you use your PC for things like this:

• You use up hard drive space and fragment your hard drive. This basically means that your hard drive has to sort through large areas of data scattered all over which compounds into taking longer to retrieve information.
• You use up memory (RAM) that gets allocated to other programs. This is a common problem many PC users have.
• You may have installed incompatible or poorly written software at one point that is causing problems.

You may notice when you get a brand new PC fresh out of the box it whizzes around like a top; flinging windows here and there, only taking seconds to complete the most complicated tasks.

• Then you start to notice it doesn’t have the zing it once did, and:
• The PC takes longer to start
• Programs take longer to open
• Error messages start to pop-up and say you have missing or corrupt files.
• Your screen flickers and your desktop Icons disappear and reappear frequently

This is about the time most people go to their CD collection and dig out the reformat or recovery CD. They toss it in the CD drive and minutes later their computer is back to the way it was when they first bought it. Many people do this and lose ALL their data!

This is unnecessary most of the time. It pains me to think of how many people go through this process everyday. Take some time to look around this site and learn how to optimize your PC!

As mentioned previously, removing files by systematically deleting them in your computer is NOT a good idea.   There are however, a few areas in your computer that you CAN delete files from without any problems at all.   These folders are called "Temporary Folders" or a "Temporary Cache".

The best free Software for cleaning out temporary files in Windows

Windows has a couple of temporary folders built into it; however, many software programs also create their own temporary folders.   Because of this, it is recommended that you use a program that is frequently updated to make sure you are removing all your temp files from you computer.

The software I recommend is CCleaner (http://www.ccleaner.com/).   This program is free and is updated frequently to know where certain programs write temporary files to.

CCleaner also allows you to customize if you would like it to clean any other folders that are not already supported.   It’s as easy and clicking "add folder to clean", and selecting the folder you want cleaned.

Another free program you can use to delete temporary folders is a program called Empty Temp Folders (http://danish-shareware.dk/soft/emptemp/).   This program does NOT update and does NOT know what folders to clean automatically, but rather, is designed to allow you to customize what folders it cleans.

After time you computer starts to collect junk like the attic of an old house theres a lot of things you used once or twice but youve tossed them aside and forgotten about them.

In this particular instance I’m talking about software that you have installed that you no longer use.

Software that you may no longer use could be games, application, utilities, tools, or out of date security products (which by the way is very bad).

How NOT to get rid of software

A lot of people make the mistake of going on a treasure hunt throughout their folders and files deleting stuff that doesnt look like it belongs.

NEVER do this.

The second you do this you are risking breaking other working programs, and even if you do remove files that are no longer needed you probably wont find the file and information that was installed in your computer when the file was first created.

What is a DLL File, and why shouldn’t I delete them?

DLL stands for Dynamic Link Library.

You’ve probably seen these files scattered everywhere all over your system and have been wondering what they do. DLL files are usually an extremely important part of Windows, and without them your computer simply would not be able to run.

A lot of software also requires the use of DLLs to operate properly. Not all software has its own DLLs created specifically for its own purposes many of the DLLs that come prepackaged with windows help developers write programs that interface and work properly when ran in a Windows Operating System.

DLLs are unique in that they can be shared by many programs at one time. They contain information that is globally useful, and allow this to be shared amongst many other programs and software operating at the same time in your computer.

So now you may understand why you cant just go around deleting files. If you delete a DLL that you think belongs to one program, you may actually be deleting a file that belongs to several programs which will prevent ALL of them from working properly.

How to get rid of Software Safetly: Add or Remove Programs

Use Add or Remove Programs to remove software completely.

The Add or Remove programs applet is built into windows to allow you to easily see what programs are currently installed, and to give you the ability to remove them automatically.

We hear a lot of people asking us how to delete a program or how to get rid of a program. If you were to go through a computer manually deleting all the files, settings and registry entries that were installed with a program, it would not only take hours, but you couldnt possible find everything and may risk breaking other programs.

The reason why manually removing software would be so painful and slow is that many programs store information in something called the registry. The registry contains settings and other valuable configuration information many programs need to run properly. Even if you could delete all of the files for a program on a computer, all the entries in the registry would impossible to remove completely.

This is where Add or remove Programs comes in. Not only does Add or Remove Programs remove the files and folder associated with a program, but it also removes information that was written to the registry when it was installed.

When you install most programs, they use something called an Installer. An installer is a piece of software that programs written by developers use to install files, folders and write registry information. This installer records all the information written into the registry and stores it into a database. When you uninstall software, this information is read from the database so that it knows exactly what needs to be removed.

How to open the Add or Remove programs applet

Add or Remove programs is basically an application built into Windows that lists all of the programs that are currently installed in your computer. You can use Add or Remove programs to uninstall any one of the items listed in it.

There are two methods of doing this.

Method 1:

Step 1. Click Start > Settings > Control Panel to open the control panel.
Step 2. Locate the icon Add or Remove Programs and double click it.

Method 2:

Step 1. Click Start > Run.
Step 2. Type in "control appwiz.cpl" without the quotes.
Step 3. Click OK.

When the Add or Remove Programs applet opens, you can locate the program(s) you want to remove, and uninstall it completely!

Your PC calculates millions of equations and algorithms in split seconds.  The more information that it needs to process, the longer you have to wait for the results.

The plain and simple answer to why your PC seems slows down so much is that it’s overloaded!  It can only handle so many things at once before it cannot operate within it’s optimal performance threshold; the computers ability to do multiple tasks at one time becomes more than it can handle efficiently.

Reasons why your Computer slows down the longer you own it

The longer you have your computer, the more you want to do with it.  This usually means installing games and applications, downloading music and movies, editing photos and so on.

There are a few things that happen when you use your PC for things like this:

You use up hard drive space and fragment your hard drive. This basically means that your hard drive has to sort through large areas of data scattered all over which compounds into taking longer to retrieve information.

You use up memory (RAM) that gets allocated to other programs.  This is a common problem many PC users have.

You may have installed incompatible or poorly written software at one point that is causing problems.

The solution to: "How do I make my computer faster?"

Many of your problems can be fixed in MINUTES.  The number one problem I still find in slow computers to this day is that there are too many startup items loading when the PC boots up.  An optimized PC should have no more than a few programs starting when the PC starts.

Most people do not realize this, but most viruses, malware, and spyware can only be activated by loading on startup. If a virus is not loaded on startup, it is nothing more than a useless chunk of data on your hard drive.

Just think, if you had 10 startup items loading when you boot your computer how much faster your computer would be if you prevented 7 unnecessary items from loading!   Depending on the size of the program, you could save 1-10 minutes every time you start your computer up!

Some programs like Anti-Virus must load when you boot your PC up.  These programs can use a lot of system resources, but without them the risks out-weigh the benefits.

If you are interested in optimizing your PC, one of the first things you will want to do is turn off startup items using the system configuration utility. I will talk about this more in furuter posts.